Conundrum

Conundrum...an intricate and difficult problem. That's what I had on my hands or in my hands with my latest knitting project. I had discovered a simple sketch in an Italian knitting book that both intrigued and confused me. Since everything was in Italian and metrics, I had little to go on except for the sketch, a long rectangle. It was a bit of a shock to this self proclaimed queen of rectangles that there could possibly be one more rectangle that I hadn't already explored or designed. So I took the challenge. 


The first part was easy, knit a rectangle 20 inches wide and 100 inches long. I chose to do this on my standard knitting machine, one I hadn't used for sometime. More about that another time. The tricky part was shaping one end at an angle, but I managed to do that by increasing one stitch every row at the beginning. I was quite proud of myself when my piece came out to be a close match to the drawing.

The conundrum developed when I started to "put it together". I made this drawing up for you in color, something I didn't have to begin with. You start by folding the piece and joining the angled end to the side (the black lines being the seam, about 18"). Next you join the "red seams" and then the "blue" seams. Sounds simple but it's quite confusing manipulating this long piece of fabric that wants to curl and twist upon itself. I finally cut out a paper pattern and taped it together to get the idea. I was beginning to think that I might just have a long piece of nothing on my hands when it fell into place. It's an interesting piece with lots of design potential. What you can't see very well from the photo is that it's a combination of a shrug and a poncho, very dramatic. I knit a second one narrower and shorter with also a nice results. The conundrum was solved. RRT